


When Only Half Spent was the Night

by allegoricalrose (SilentStars)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:04:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3061964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/pseuds/allegoricalrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, just when you least expect it, your song reprises its chorus. A Christmas fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Only Half Spent was the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Brownie points for spotting all the Christmas carol references therein!

The old familiar tune was trumpeting out of the ancient stonework as the Doctor shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his back on the choir voices. It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself here, not the first time he’d heard this carol flung to the snow-dappled wind, and it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to shut it all out.

_The floweret, so small  
That smells so sweet to us  
With its clear light  
Dispels the darkness._

His shoes crunched in the new snow, leaving indents in time and space that he had no business making. For not the first time, not the first time at all, he tugged closed the cast iron gate that kept swinging open in his mind, a gate guarding a warm parlor room with crackling embers and warm hearths. A room where babies were born and old men took their final breaths, heralding the light and flanked by the ones they loved.

He turned his back on that, too.  
"Why are we here? Again?" he mentally ground out at his timeship, standing solidly and unchanging a few steps away. "Why do you do this to me?"

The snow kept falling and the TARDIS doors remained locked.

"And why always this song? _There Is No Rose_ would be more appropriate.”

His third and only unbroken heart kept her silence.

The echoes died down and the night wind was biting; he drew his jacket tighter and watched his breath rise and dissipate into the cold. The mid-winter evening was cloudless and moth-eaten with stardust.

A single soprano sliced through the still, his pure notes piercing more holes in the firmament. The frosty breeze died down and the moon rose over the rooftops.

_See, amid the winter’s snow  
Born for us on Earth below,  
See, the tender Lamb appears,  
Promised from eternal years._

Two children raced up behind him, their pace unfaltering as they slipped and slid along the icy cobblestones. The girl’s woolen jacket was only a blur of red against her thick black tights and fur-lined hat, her braids flying behind her. She almost tumbled to the ground and the Doctor tensed, but the boy steadied her with a hand on her back. He took her hand when they approached the heavy wooden doors of the cathedral and together they pushed it open and disappeared within. The falling snow, snow on snow on snow, covered their footprints where they had trod only minutes earlier.

The Doctor looked away.

The wind resumed its wild lament, raging against the bitter cold. He didn’t bother turning at the sound of more dinting snow, only two footsteps this time, slow and careful. A scent wafted by his nose, simultaneously heating the sod under his feet and freezing his blood cold. 

That smell… That smell was unique to another universe. A universe populated by gingerbread men and unlocked cast iron gates. Hair prickled up on the back of his neck.

An electronic whirling sound.

A puff of frozen air, not his own, evaporated into the ether in front of his eyes.

His lips moved of their own accord, his vocal cords forcing out the only syllable that meant anything to him anymore. The only sound that could ever warm his icy veins.

"Rose."

There was a harpsichord of a laugh. “Doctor. Turn around.”

“No.”

“No?”

“If I turn around, I’ll know it’s only an old man’s desperate hallucination. Let me live in the fantasy a little longer. It’s Christmas, after all.”

A few crunching footsteps and a ghost’s hand on his arm. “I’m a common illusion?”

He closed his eyes.

“You’re my daydream and my nightmare. My morning sun and my star shining in the east.”

“I’m not only in your dreams, Doctor.” He felt the shift in the deep winter air before he felt stardust on his lips and he responded instantly, attempting to draw out its fire before it faded away.

But it didn’t. She was solid beneath his trembling hands, she tasted of sparks and spicy ginger, and she kept kissing him even as his mind attempted to return to reality. Even when she pulled back, she remained firmly ensconced in his arms.

“Convinced?”

Their breath was made manifest and mingled in the frosty night between them. “I’ll never be convinced.”

Her lip became caught between her teeth, the flash of white standing out in the dark like a candle. “I guess I’ll have to keep convincing you then.”

Church bells began to ring out. Had the song started again? A final reprise?

_It came, a flow’ret bright,  
Amid the cold of winter,  
When half spent was the night._

Sometimes songs end and sometimes they last forever, their recurring choruses pulling the individual verses together in an unending encore just when the last notes fade into the heavens. 

Sometimes, just when the night’s darkness seems interminable and the frost is cruel and the stars go out…

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the morning star appears over the horizon and the dawn breaks and you fall to your knees.


End file.
